The different faces of P

  He says people use P for different reasons.  In small doses it can make you to stay awake, decrease appetite and increase talkativeness, energy and alertness.
    These recreational effects are the reason many people smoke P. And when it’s used in small doses, the signs of being on P can go unnoticed.
    Mr Crouch says a long-term heavy user will show signs of extreme weight loss, lack of energy, itching, teeth grinding, violent behaviour and suicidal tendencies. “A majority of users don’t show the signs of being on P, only extreme chronic users.
    “People who use P once a week can function quite normally in our community,”
he says.
Sarah (not her real name), 29, works full-time in a café in Tauranga. She has been casually smoking P for seven years, taking the drug about once every three weeks. “It makes me concentrate and work faster,” she says.
    A councillor from Alcohol and Drug Association New Zealand (ADANZ) says sometimes it can be hard to tell when someone is on P. “It is difficult to tell if someone is using (methamphetamine) if they are not using a great deal.”
    Mr Crouch says, “It is very easy to miss the signs that someone is on P when you are not trained.
    “How many people stare into someone’s eyes to see dilated pinpoint pupils?”
    Some people will take P fortnightly and never show any major physical effects. Others will take it once and will show major physical effects and can easily become addicted,
he says.
    The ADANZ councillor says it is uncommon to think someone is on P when they are not. However when someone is drunk, the effects can overrule the visual and behavioural signs of being on P.
    If somebody is aggressive, noisy and argumentative it can be difficult to distinguish between alcohol and P. Like alcohol, P can make you loud, self centred and confrontational. 
    Recognising that someone is on P is difficult when the user hasn’t told anyone. It is common for users to keep their addiction secret, says the ADANZ councillor.
    “People are likely not to tell close ones and try to solve their problems themselves.
    “They realise it in an early stage and delay seeking help,” he says.
    Mr Crouch says users can believe they are at risk if they tell someone about their addiction, because of fears over embarrassment and worries about social stigma. Trust also becomes a major issue when the user is stealing money to fund the expensive drug.
    Sarah gets the drug from her friends
and smokes it with them. Her mother and sister are both nurses and do not know she is currently on P.
    “Once they knew I was on it and they got me off when I moved back home.”
    A few years ago her mother sent her to a rehab camp which was a short-term success.
    Sarah says the media tends not to show people using P recreationally. This makes the public think all P users are lower class and criminal. 
    “There is a lot of publicity on people who are at the hardened end. Like people who commit crimes because of bizarre behaviour,” says the ADANZ councillor.
    Sarah’s boyfriend is currently doing 18 months in prison for P-related convictions. 
    “He was caught using it and it made him do outrageous things.
    “He went off with another girl because he didn’t know what he was doing. I had to just let him go, there was nothing I could do.”
    The ADANZ councillor says the media focus a lot on the worries over the manufacturing of the drug. 
    “It is illegal so there are no controls over manufacture. There is no control on what has been put into the batch.”
    P ingredients are inexpensive and are available over the counter in New Zealand.  Because it is made illegally, people do not know what is in it or how safe it is.
    Sarah says it is extremely dangerous for people who do not know where the drug has originally come from.
    “Especially if it has been cut – pure P is not cut. Depending on how many hands it goes through, it gets to the point where it is just shit and can make you sick because of added ingredients like rat poison.”
The laboratories needed to manufacture the drug can easily be set up in houses or in some cases motor vehicles.
    According to the Foundation for Alcohol and Drug Education (FADE), only nine meth-amphetamine drug labs were busted by police in the year 2000. In 2005 there were 204.
    Mr Crouch says the easy manufacture of the drug is causing the major growth in users. Although marijuana is more widely used than P, tinnie house dealers are giving away free samples of P so buyers return for higher sales.
    According to a survey by the New Zealand Drug Foundation, 52 per cent of heavy users said methamphetamine was “very easy” to get. And 17 per cent claimed they could source methamphetamine in less than 20 minutes.